


Just Thirty Minutes

by GrayceAdamsArchive



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Desperation, F/M, Lily's Wedding Day, Sad, Wishful Thinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-09-17
Packaged: 2017-12-26 21:52:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/970675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrayceAdamsArchive/pseuds/GrayceAdamsArchive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How can you put away the love of a lifetime in just thirty minutes?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Thirty Minutes

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little one-shot I wrote ages ago and just found again while cleaning out my thumb drive. :) Enjoy.

The clock on the wall sounds so loud in their ears. Each movement of the second hand accompanied by a minute tick that seems as loud as cannon fire. It's 9:30 exactly.

Just thirty more minutes.

The women in their matching, frilly pink dresses are gone, along with their gushing and giggling. Silence is all that fills the room, louder than if they'd been screaming. Two figures, silent, unmoving, each staring at the other like they are their whole world. And to him, she is his whole world. He just wishes that his world in reality could look as she does now.

She wears all white, her hair like dark fire under the long veil of nearly translucent lace. Her wide green eyes are like emerald lanterns, burning bright in her pale face. She is beautiful. She is perfect.

She is lost to him.

For while he looks at her with all the love in the world, she stares at him with pain and regret and a million other emotions, none of which are the one he wants her so desperately to feel for him. The silence stretches on, unbroken, as thunderous as a thousand lions roaring right next to their ears. The clock keeps on ticking, each click an explosion, every second passing by one more closer to when he will never be able to look at her again.

“Forgive me,” she whispers, her voice ragged, rough, like she'd been crying for hours. But her face shows no sign of tears. She keeps them bottled inside, saving them for later, so much later than no one will ever know the real reason for her weeping. She cannot look at him, cannot bear to see the agony in his black eyes. She stares at her hands instead, long, delicate fingers encased in white gloves that go to her elbows. She wants to speak again, but now that screaming silence is back, pounding against her eardrums, too loud to ignore, broken every second, again and again by the shattering tick, tick, tick, of the clock on the wall.

9:33 AM. Just twenty seven minutes left. How do you express a life time's worth of love in just twenty seven minutes?

“Run away with me,” he says, reaching out to take her hands into his much larger ones, his pale skin nearly as white as her dress with strain and agony. “We'll go to America, to Australia, somewhere they will never find us. Just...come with me. Please.” his words are a soft whisper, but they sound like a wail in the pressing silence. She wants to give in, to tell him yes. She wants to cry.

She can't stop the single tear that streaks down her cheek.

 _No. No tears for you. You chose this, you chose_ him. _Don't you dare go back on it now. You don't_ deserve _tears._

She takes a deep, shuddering breath, blinking her eyes rapidly. He reaches up to brush the tear away with his finger, studying it on his skin like a priceless diamond. His dark eyes meet hers, and she feels her resolve tremble. He'd been a part of her for so long, more than half her life. How could she let him go now?

_Easy. Break his heart._

“I can't,” she whispers, closing her eyes, fighting more tears, unable to watch the pain, the pure, unadulterated agony rip across his narrow features. She knows that it's there, raw, ragged, painful to behold, let alone feel. “I can't.” she repeats, squeezing her eyes shut tighter, “I just can't!”

_See? Easy._

“Why?” he feels himself shattering inside, his soul cracking at the center, little pieces breaking off at the edges, crumbling, falling apart like a condemned building. She won't look at him, but all he can do is stare at her. So beautiful. So perfect. And getting further away as the seconds tick their way by.

9:37 AM. Just twenty three minutes. How can you put away the love of a lifetime in just twenty three minutes?

“Leave everything I love? Leave the world to You-Know-Who? Leave my family, my friends, leave it all behind?” she breathes, her shoulders shaking, her whole body trembling as she shakes her head, her eyes still tightly shut. Her best friend, the one person she trusted most in the world, the one she had at one time, at the most irrational age know to man, had hated with a passion previously unknown to her, she had only just regained a few weeks ago. She had pushed him away, and for good reasons, but none could change the fact that she had loved him, right up until that fateful word had passed his lips.

_“Mudblood!”_

Even the echo of a memory made her heart ache and burn. Just a few weeks ago, they had met again, had stared at each other in the middle of Diagon Alley like there was no one else in the world. And they had embraced, holding each other like they would never, ever let go. And he didn't want to let her go. He wouldn't let her go. He couldn't, even if he tried. That's why he was here. That's why he'd risked discovery and capture and Azkaban, just to see her.

To see her in her wedding dress, about to walk down the aisle to a man that was not him.

The cracks in his soul became larger, deeper, spider webbing across that glass image of himself inside like he'd been struck with a hammer. Desperately, he tells her, “You won't be leaving everything. You'd have me. You'll always have me. Or do you not love me, Lily?” A weak smile appears on her face, and she opens her eyes to look up at the tall, hook nosed man in front of her.

“I've always loved you, Sev. You know I do. You showed me magic. You gave me the world,” she tells him, reaching up to touch his hollow cheek. The past years had changed him. He was thinner, sallower, his dark eyes missing the warmth of their shared childhood.

“You are my world,” he tells her softly, lifting her veil away from her face, seeing her ivory skin clearly, her bright green eyes, the perfect almond shape, her straight nose, her cupid's bow mouth. He couldn't help but think it one more time: So beautiful. So perfect.

_And lost to you._

He cups her face, his brow knitting together as he tries to memorize her face. It is 9:44 AM. Just sixteen minutes, sixteen measly minutes more would she be Lily Evans. For sixteen minutes more, she could be his, even if it was just in his head.

“Lily,” he whispers, “I love you. I love you so much, it hurts to be away from you. I'm in agony every second that we're apart. Please, I beg you, don't do this. Don't go out there, don't walk down that aisle. Don't marry him.

“Marry me.”

She is very still, staring up at the man that had offered her a whole new world when they were no older than ten. He'd showed her magic, told her about fantastical creatures she'd thought only existed in story books. He'd given her everything he had and more, he'd been there for her, he'd listened to her, made her laugh, and made her cry tears of both joy and pain. She'd had a heart full of emotions for him. And those emotions haven't gone away. But she has new feelings inside of her, too, emotions she can't just ignore. She loves him. She really, truly loves him.

But not in the way he wants her to.

_Break his heart. Rip it out of his chest, tear it in half, and stomp on it. It's easy. You've already started. Just do it. Don't cry, don't give in. Break his heart._

_Break him._

“I can't,” she whispers, pain filling her face. She didn't think it would be this hard to let him go. She never thought that it would hurt this much inside. She didn't know that heartbreak was an actual sensation, a ripping inside the chest cavity, and not just a word used by writers when they wanted to make the story more dramatic. But this is no story, this is her wedding day, and her heart is shattering as she watches her best friend's face contort in agony.

_Finish it. Finish him. You know what to say. Now say it!_

“I love him,” she whispers, closing her eyes and swallowing her tears, “I love him, Sev.” She steps back from him, and he lets her go, trying to hold his soul and heart together as he explodes silently on the inside. It is all falling apart, and there is nothing he can do. He is watching his world blow up right in front of him, watching everything he cares about slip away into the arms of another.

The clock whirrs and clicks, then chimes the ten o'clock hour.

It is time.

The door opens, and soft music, a piano, drifts through the door. On the other side stands George Evans, Lily's father. He holds out his arm for her to take, and she takes one last long look at Severus.

“I'm sorry,” she whispers, picking up her bouquet of wild roses and lowering her veil over her face. She takes a deep breath, and places her hand on the inside of her father's elbow, and exits the room with him, not looking back. Severus Snape stares after her, his dark eyes devouring her, knowing that this is the closest he will ever get to a wedding with them both there: her walking away from him, instead of towards. He watches her reach the altar, and turn to smile at James Potter as her father hands her fingers to him, sealing the bond.

The tall, dark man watches as his whole world becomes someone else's. He watches as the one girl he's ever loved, and ever will love, marries another. He watches, and he dies inside.

“Set me a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is as strong as death, jealousy is as fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it,*” the man in yellow robes standing between Lily and James reads from the book in his hands, beaming at the couple in front of him. They look so happy.

Severus wants to curse James Potter off the planet, but he cannot. He hates him, he hates him with a rage that burns like wildfire in the very core of his shattered being, but he cannot harm a hair on his head, for hurting him would hurt Lily. And Severus could never hurt Lily again. He had already lost her once.

_And now you are losing her again._

“If any man, woman, or child has any just reason or cause why these two should not be lawfully wed, speak now, or forever hold your peace.”

He wants to scream. He wants to shout for all the world to hear, _I have a reason! I love her! I love her, and I can't just let her go! Isn't that a just enough reason for you? I've loved her since I was a child, long before this man did! I love her more! I gave her everything, she was my whole world! Would you take that from me? Is that just? Is it just that I lose everything I've ever really cared about because of one stupid word I said in a moment of embarrassment and anger? I love her! I love her, and I am losing her with every second that passes. It hurts so much to lose her._

_It hurts so much to lose her._

_I have a reason._

“I love her,” Severus whispers, but no one hears him, and Lily is looking at him with terrified eyes, and he knows that she is praying that he won't say anything, that he won't ruin her wedding. And he can't. He can't say anything above a whisper, because he loves her so much that it hurts, and despite the pain, he can't bear the thought of her suffering the pain of a paper cut, let alone the agony of her best friend ruining her wedding. “ _I love her_.” A whisper, a breath, nothing more than a soft hum of sound in the air that no one hears, and the priest declares them man and wife.

He watches as his world becomes someone else's. He watches his Lily Evans become Mrs. James Potter. His thirty minutes are up, and his world is now a place stained black and grey, a place of tears and heartbreak and bitter disappointment. He stares at what used to be his world, something white and auburn and bright green, something pure and happy as she kisses her new husband. Severus Snape watches the rotten building that is his soul finally collapse upon itself, a ruin of the grand mansion it used to be when she was his. She is lost to him, forever. And he couldn't even bring himself to fight for her.

_It hurts so much to lose her. I love her. Why can't anyone see that? Why can't she see that I am the better man, the best man for her?_

_Why did she have to walk away?_

Today is the day that everything in Severus Snape's world that was pure and bright became part of James Potter's world, leaving the former in a very dark place indeed.

Today is Lily Evans's wedding day. 

**Author's Note:**

> Any thoughts?


End file.
